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Gertrude Weil

A dedicated activist for women’s rights and racial equality, Gertrude Weil showed that local, small-scale political action could have far-reaching effects. Deeply influenced by her education at Smith, Weil returned to her North Carolina hometown and founded a local suffrage association, going on to become an important leader of the women’s suffrage movement in the state. She established the North Carolina League of Women Voters and lobbied to reform labor laws to protect women workers in factories. Weil also dedicated herself to racial equality decades before the Civil Rights Movement, bringing national attention to the lynchings rampant in the South. In the 1960s and ‘70s, she fought segregation, worked to integrate schools, and convened a biracial council in her home. Throughout her life, she dedicated herself to the problems that gripped the nation on a local level, transforming her town and her state.